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The marketing wheeze is done, the 250-year-old tradition of brewing continues, but the literary history of the pint of plain is stout and illustrious too, writes ALAN O’RIORDAN

IN 1956, GUINNESS began sponsorship of a national poetry awards, with cash prizes of £300, £200 and £100; the best 60 or so poems were collected in an annual anthology. But the role of Guinness in Irish writing has long been more complicated than simply that of patronage; by the 1950s, stout itself had become such an accredited theme that the Guinness awards could have included a category dedicated to a uniquely Irish sub-genre: the poetry of the pint of plain.